


i swear to the stars, i'll burn this whole city down

by krautrock



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Bad sort-of-High School AU, Dear sweet Micolash, Eventual Smut, M/M, Matchmaking, lighter and fluffier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5322275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krautrock/pseuds/krautrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes the premise ''what if the Gray Wolf cap's name is actually a reference to Djura's type of guy'' and runs it straight into the ground. [UNFINISHED]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i swear to the stars, i'll burn this whole city down

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up becoming really disappointed with this thing after the first chapter, I wrote it to mock the forcibly ironic fake-Dickens writing style of recent historical fantasy authors but I think it came across really poorly.

‘’Please review the syllabus at home, your written exam will include everything listed.’’ Master Ludwig had a talent for making the slacking festival that was the first week of school feel like a very long trial with his grave, noble voice and absolute discipline. The Hunter Academy was particularly hands-on but not even these newly armed second years could escape the bane of theory classes, especially not with a master as harsh as him. “Class is dismissed.”  
‘’Djura, where were you?’’ shouted a familiar female voice among the din of the newly liberated crowd of students. The subject of her inquiry touched his neck apologetically and fetched a little badge from his pocket.  
‘’Swung by the workshop to get this, now I can get in and out without being asked for my student plate. I was pretty late so I couldn’t sit with you, the only open spot was next to the weird bloke…’’  
Eileen was about to admonish him for arriving late for his first class, but sitting next to Simon seemed like punishment enough.  
Slowly, they made their way back to the apartment they shared, checking to see if the sign they had lovingly affixed to the front door was still in place and not answered to. The sign read ‘’housemate wanted’’, followed by the desired slice of rent and a warning stating that it was a student residence. They were hoping to find someone poor enough, weird enough and foreign enough to want to live with them. Everyone at the Academy seemed to like Djura well enough, and those who didn’t took more to calling him immature than evil. Eileen, however, was almost as low on the social hierarchy as Simon himself. She was short and dark-skinned, with a cough that betrayed her habit of smoking like a grandfather. Though she was a very kind person when not making wooshing noises with her home-tailored assassin capes, social mores dictated that she was a Very Unacceptable Female, though Djura hadn’t stopped seeing her as his Absolute Best Friend through his growing popularity.  
Poor, weird, or foreign, they needed someone to fill the spare room and relieve them of some of the rent. At this point they’d take just about anyone who showed up with a bag of money and wasn’t a bloodstarved beast. Hopefully that would mean they’d finally have enough savings to not rely on the Academy’s dining hall (a glorified old refectorium at the cathedral) for their lunch every day. The food was good enough, but they shared the place with the apprentice Executioners, who had a terrible habit of combining drinking songs with prayers before, during, and after meals. As a show of goodwill, Eileen and Djura had lovingly furnished the spare room with a mattress and an almost brand new cabinet that could hold at least two changes of clothes. Pure luxury.

 

* * *

 

The following morning started off, as usual, with a fight about who would use the washroom first. Then a fight about who would make breakfast - which invariably was the person who’d used the washroom first, for the sake of fairness. Djura was spreading cheap preserved fruit on a slice of bread while Eileen modeled her various coats, testing the fwoosh factor of each as she flipped them from side to side. She took one last semi-satisfied look at herself in the mirror and then headed for the front door.

‘’I’m going outside to test this in today’s wind, don’t eat my-’’ she stopped suddenly as she felt a heavy weight against the door she’d just opened. With all her might, she let it slide slowly to the floor. As the unseen weight spilled into the house to her surprise it revealed itself not to be a bag of food as she might have hoped, but an enormous sleeping man. His eyes flashed awake as his head hit the floor, and he looked rather undisturbed to be waking up in such a spot.  
‘’Mornin. I hear there’s a room for me here.’’ The man was not only enormous, but about ten years her elder. More importantly, he looked poor, weird, and decently foreign. Eileen gave him time to stand up, and Djura was already by her side when the man finally looked them in the eye. They stood defensively in case the man was a bloodthirsty beast, or worse: had no money.  
‘’You have the rent money?’’ Eileen questioned, holding her palm out in the traditional ’hand it over’ way.  
The man replied with a grunt and a quick rummage through his tatty pockets, from which he produced a coin purse that he threw entirely too hard into Eileen’s hand. Djura whistled audibly at the display.  
‘’So, do you have a name?’’ Eileen said as they all stood around the dinner table, waiting for her to finish counting the coins.  
‘’Gascoigne’’ he replied, surveying the place he’d soon call home.  
‘’You look pretty old, Gascoigne.’’  
‘’Used t’be a priest elsewhere, but you could say it weren’t me calling. Got a friend at that Academy, so why not. Put this bulk to use.” And what bulk it was. Djura was shamelessly admiring the man’s hairy chest peering out from his too-tight shirt, and Eileen felt all of his shame for him.  
‘’Im Djura, and this is Eileen,’’ the younger man spoke, still staring openly at the new stranger’s sculpted body. “We’ll be your new housemates.”  
‘’Pleased.’’ Somehow it didn’t sound very sincere.  
‘’So, uh, Gascoigne… Let me show you to your quarters.’’ Djura grabbed his arm in an overt effort to feel how hard the muscles underneath were, and led him with difficulty. Eileen was all but clutching at her head in shame when he returned to the kitchen.  
‘’Do you think he liked me?’’ he asked his friend, with a nervous but giddy smile.  
‘’May the gods grant him patience if he doesn’t soon.’’

 

* * *

 

Fortunately for Djura, the enormous priest turned out to be much better company than expected, and tolerated his company on the way to the Academy. This gave man an excellent opportunity to gaze at the triangular shape of Gascoigne’s back under his shabby shirt.

‘’So, Father, I assume you don’t have a wife, do you?’’ he not-so-subtly inquired.  
‘’No.’’  
‘’Ah well neither do I. Or Eileen, for that matter. Uhm, do you need me to show you around town?”  
‘’I asked Henryk.’’ Djura recognized the name as a particularly stone-faced third year clique leader. Imagining the two getting along wasn’t a hard task at all.  
He was entirely smitten with this bizarre man, and knew of no way to directly approach the feeling without running the risk of getting a few teeth (or a few ribs) knocked in. Eileen had taken the route over the rooftops, where she practised her Incredibly Scary sneaky assassin jumps and pretended to have used her skills to arrive earlier than the others to the Academy, rather than just having taken a simple shortcut over the block. Gascoigne wasn’t terribly enlightening company, but the deep baritone of his voice was enough encouragement to keep trying to talk to him. Both took their separate paths upon entering the academy. Gascoigne waved Djura off to his fencing practise and met with Henryk at the designated delinquents’ corner.  
‘’Out with the Gray Wolf are you?’’ Henryk snidely remarked. Next to Gascoigne, the average sized man was little more than a child.  
‘’We share the house.’’ Gascoigne either didn’t notice or didn’t care about his friend’s casual mentioning of Djura’s favorite hat, and a sense of tragic miscommunication passed unknown between them.

‘’There’s worse fates,’’ Henryk murmured before inhaling deeply from his pipe. ‘’But tell me one thing, does the kid touch an awful lot?”

 

* * *

 

 

At Oto’s corner of the workshop, the spatial equivalent to a bum seat at the theater, an iron masked man was soldering a rifle onto a spear to the amazement of three similarly inclined gentlemen. To every other artisan in the Academy they were little more than madmen, but to the more conservative branches, who took to calling them Powder Kegs, they were potentially dangerous heretics with no regard for safety or finesse who would be pushed out of the workshop in due time. Djura marveled at the honest glee they showed in their work, and the blend of violence and idealistic abandon needed to brandish such dangeorus weaponry resonated with him. He was determined to become a fully fledged member after his apprenticeship ended, whether they were still in the main workshop or based in some decrepit loft in the city.  
‘’Spear rifle? You’re a genius!’’ he called to the working man. He had entered through the back door, brandishing the metallic entry pass Oto had crafted for him, partly because Djura was so nice about his rudimentary designs.  
‘’Why thank you! And, pray tell, did my eyes see correctly? It seems that the Gray Wolf has finally snatched himself a prey.’’ Djura’s face reddened as Oto’s men erupted into laughter. Gray Wolf had become his nickname ever since someone (the details on who were blurry) decided to draw a comparison between his preferred hat and the way he had a tendency to fall for older, taller, and dangerous men. It quickly spread to the entire workshop, and from there to the students who frequented it.  
‘’He’s a new housemate actually,’’ He sat on a dirty table and started swinging his legs ‘’I think we’re making good progress.’’  
‘’Watch out, kid. You know what they say about that one, don’t you? Got some of the beast in him, he does,’’ Oto warned. ‘’But that’s probably right up yer alley.’’ Djura’s smile widened at this. Somewhere in the background, one of Oto’s men was almost done polishing a brand new gatling gun.

 

* * *

 

The library was a humble hall when compared to the grandeur of the cathedrals, but Eileen recognized all over it places where she had practised her silent movements, books she had helped bind herself, and the distinct feeling of being in a place where she didn’t feel like an outcast. Over her years of volunteer work, she had even warmed up to its bizarre, theatrical director.

‘’Ah, Eileen! Wonderful! What brings you here today, my dear?’’ The man jumped down from the first level railing, hitting the floor in a way that was reminescent both of a clumsy assassin and a bowing lover.  
‘’Less, Mico, this is incredibly embarassing’’ she spoke hushedly, not wanting her business to be overheard.  
‘’Don’t call me that,’’ he whispered, playfully holding Eileen by the shoulders and leading her to a comfy chair “And what could be so embarassing that it would vex a great and powerful daughter of the shadows like yourself?”  
‘’Well, first of all, the way you talk to me, but secondly, I need something to help someone, and I need maximum discretion.” The tone of her voice relayed an unexpected sense of importance. Micolash’s eyes widened. ‘’So, I have this friend, right. And I need to set him up with this other friend, and they both live in my house.’’ She took a deep breath. ‘’Basically, what’s your stock on the erotic romance subgenre?’’  
‘’Ha! Brilliant! Eileen, my dear, I did think it was time you took an interest in those subjects! The wheel of romance turns for all indeed, one way or another!’’ He ran into the maze of shelves, pirouetting out of sight.  
‘’The things I do for my friends…’’ she said to herself, following Micolash so he wouldn’t dump an armful of comprimising literature right in front of her in the open light of the reading hall.  
‘’Now let’s see, what is the particular demographic you seek?’’ inquired her sort-of-boss, already pulling out titles he considered notable.  
‘’Well, something with… A big man, I guess. Sort of an older type gent.’’ She scratched her cheek, trying to think of a more specific subject. ‘’Maybe a werewolf?” Micolash’s head turned away from the books.  
‘’A werewolf novel? Why, darling, I have just the thing for your mysterious needs.’’ He darted to a shelf behind them, having memorized the location of just about every book in the library through the very scientific method of Just Knowing Where Everything Is, and produced a homebrewed binding (Eileen recognized the initials for Yharnam Academic Library on the cover) of what had been, originally, a cheap pamphlet serial.  
‘’It’s called…’’ Micolash cleared his throat dramatically ‘’The Were-Hunter.’’  
‘’Discreet.’’  
‘’Have a look through that one, and you can have the ones I pulled out too. Take them to my office if you need privacy and leave the ones you don’t want there.”  
“Mico, I could just hug you sometimes if you weren’t so bloody weird.”


End file.
